


Mistakes Were Made

by OctarineSparks



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pining Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctarineSparks/pseuds/OctarineSparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Sherlock has ever done is get things wrong, even the one time he thought he got it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistakes Were Made

Sherlock was born, and he long considered that his first mistake of many. It was a dreary cold Thursday night when William Sherlock Scott Holmes was born, the cries he never made missing the opportunity to be drowned out by the rain lashing at the hospital windows. At first the doctors were concerned as this tiny, screwed up thing refused to acknowledge the sheer horror of what it had just been through, but his mother was far less worried. 

"His brother was much the same," she said, sleepy and clammy and thoroughly overjoyed. Less than two seconds old, and Sherlock was already showing disdain for the mess he had gotten himself into by being born. 

His next mistake came at the age of five, when he got it into his head that it might be nice to have a friend. However, it transpired that even five year old children were not immune to Sherlock's particular brand of arrogance, which was already showing promise of becoming a fully fledged sociopathic disorder even at so tender an age, and friends were not forthcoming. It didn't matter though, as his parents bought him a dog, who never seemed to mind when he insinuated he was an idiot, and who could also catch a thrown frisbee in his mouth before it landed. 

At the age of eleven, Sherlock hastily agreed to be moved forward several years at school, and this was a blunder so massive that it was truly worthy of capital letters. That is to say, it was a Big Mistake. Now not only was he arrogant, but he was arrogant in a world where his classmates were not only able but willing to lock him in the caretakers cupboard and leave him there, until a confused Mr Wilson let him out while searching for a mop. 

At sixteen he went to university to study chemistry, which was seen more as a mistake by his parents than Sherlock himself, who soon learnt the best and easiest ways to check if his cocaine had been laced with something that might make it harmful or, Heaven forbid, less potent. It was not much of a shock as it was a disappointment that Sherlock could still come top of the year in any test he sat, even with red-rimmed eyes and a headache that threatened to kill him. 

An then of course, there was his second a Big Mistake. Arrogance and intelligence don't always make for good bedfellows, as one will usually try to tell the other that it is wrong. Sadly, intelligence is always right yet arrogance always wins, and so it was that Sherlock found himself sitting in a puddle of his own vomit in an alley beside a supermarket, having to confess that perhaps he had taken slightly more than he was able to handle as his universe span into darkness. 

If one Inspector Gregory Lestrade hadn't been the responding officer to the worried phone call from the shop's manager, things could have ended very badly indeed. 

As it turned out, Lestrade was not as intelligent as Sherlock, (so few people were), but he could read others like a book and he knew potential when he saw it. He made a deal with the bedraggled twenty something that in exchange for getting clean, he could have a peek at some of the Yards older, unsolved cases. 

It was mentioned once or twice that Sherlock could perhaps go through the training and become a detective proper, but he had serious misgivings. The idea of being on a pay roll made him visibly blanche, as there was no way he could show up in a bed sheet or take a week off if he just couldn't be arsed, as he was fairly certain that sort of behaviour would end in a massive being fired. He was pretty much done with mistakes by this point. 

Or so he thought, but then there was that small fire at his flat. It was perfectly controlled, honestly, until he idiot neighbour had stepped in and thrown what he thought was a beaker of water over the blaze. Yes, white spirit is colourless and and runny, but to confuse it with water is just plain idiocy. 

He found a new flat, though, but someone, (and he suspected it was Mycroft), had planted the idea in his head that it might be good to have someone there to keep an eye on him and ensure that no other parts of London were razed to the ground at his hand. 

Asking John Watson to be his flatmate was not a mistake. In fact, he was almost certain that it was the first thing he had ever gotten right in his life. 

Of course, he continued to make mistakes, but having John by his side seemed to nullify them all, and he found he didn't dwell on them so much. Every time he thought he was a weirdo or a freak, John would call him brilliant, and John was not the sort of man to spout useless platitudes. He had finally gotten it right, and life was good. 

Of course, arrogance always wins over intelligence. 

As he stood by John's side, watching him pledge to love another for the rest of his days, Sherlock thought that perhaps letting John move in had been a Very Big Mistake after all. 

Something inside of him, something cold and unused for so long, was broken. He strongly suspected that it was his heart. Neither arrogance nor intelligence couldn't save him from that, and worst of, neither could John. That was John's job, to be there when all else failed, and now that too was lost to him. 

And for Sherlock, who had nothing, except arrogance, intelligence and a broken heart, this was just a reminder of what a stupid thing he had done on that dreary Thursday night, so many years ago.


End file.
